Team wins birdwatching contest after marathon trip through Union County

Jeremy Walsh/New Jersey Local News ServiceBrett Bowser and Fred Virrazzi look for birds along the Rahway River. Their team won a prize in the New Jersey Audubon Society's World Series of Birding.UNION COUNTY — Armed with binoculars and decades of experience, three Middlesex County men drove 150 miles through populous Union County, staking out marshes, the Watchung Reservation and even cities like Linden and Elizabeth, to win a top birdwatching prize.

Fred Virrazzi, 53, Brett Bowser, 28, and Emile DeVito, 51, spotted 132 species including ducks, a turkey hen on 14 eggs, hunting owls, peregrine falcons nesting on the Union County Court House in Elizabeth and a threatened species of heron in a tree above an urban street.

“Almost nobody goes birding in those settings,” DeVito said, noting that city residents are often unaware of the species that live near their homes. “Until you learn to appreciate what’s in your own backyard, it’s pretty hard to appreciate what’s 60 or 70 miles away in the mountains.”

They found the highest percentage of known species in a single county — 88 percent — of 14 teams competing in the category in the New Jersey Audubon Society’s World Series of Birding last weekend. It was one of a dozen categories in the competition, which brought 1,000 people from all over the country and helped raise funds for conservation groups.

It was the first time anyone has won for Union County since the prize was established in 1998.

Virrazzi, of Carteret, and DeVito, of South Plainfield, have been birding for 35 years.
Bowser, who lives in Woodbridge, is in his fifth year, but this was his first competition. He spent a month studying 100 bird calls.

“It was a long day,” he said. “I was lucky in that I got to go out with two guys that have birded longer than I have been alive.”

Apart from two hours in a boat on the Rahway River, the trio piled into Virrazzi’s BMW 525i, which he drove ferociously through the slick muddy roads along the marshes in Linden and the busy streets of Elizabeth.

The team spotted a larger percentage of species in the county than teams in Monmouth, Burlington, Cumberland, Sussex, Somerset, Warren, Passaic and Atlantic counties.

The team’s familiarity with the environment goes beyond weekends spent birding.
DeVito is the manager of science and stewardship at the New Jersey Conservation Foundation. Virrazzi is the president of National Biodiversity Parks, a nonprofit land preservation and ecological management firm. Bowser is an inspector for the federal Fish and Wildlife Service.

Virrazzi, who is also a member of the preservationist Rahway River Association, said the bird counts this year were probably lower due to heavy snows, but he also lamented the loss of habitat due to encroaching real estate development, the proliferation of grass and the growing deer population in the state.

“You’re dying of many different cuts, unfortunately,” he said.

After faxing the results to the Audubon Society just before midnight, the trio was so tired that they overslept the May 16 awards ceremony in Cape May.

“We don’t do it to get a prize,” DeVito said. “We do it to bring people’s attention to the need to preserve species.”

But he noted the last time he won a birding prize, which resembles a rock, they were forced to share it with another team.